new cuddeback cams

[willy]

This weekend I bought three cuddelink cams and caps via BAss proshops trade in opportunity.

I set them up in my house and they worked great except for the sound they emitted. I contacted Mark Cuddeback and John V about this and they got back to me in a very timely manner.

The cams were making a loud clicking noise when taking a pic in the house. It was loud enough to hear while the tv was on. What they explained to me was that because of the lighting in the house he filter lens was flipping with every photo. It only flips once or twice a day, dawn or dusk.

They were correct that it was the filter lens that drops down over the lens and that when the lens didn't deploy they we quiet, no sound that I could hear.

I am going to put them out this week and start my experiment. If these work as advertised they will be a game changer.

 

[bueller]

Please let us know how they perform. I sure would like to view a pic of my plot right now to see what's growing or not growing.

 

[Bill]

Good customer service goes
A long way. Glad to hear the click got worked out so easily.

Please let us know how they perform. I sure would like to view a pic of my plot right now to see what's growing or not growing.

Sometimes it's better not to know

Me see's no brasicas on my camera. But it did rain 1.5 inches the night before last so who knows.

 

[Peplin Creek]

I like them. Seem to run as advertised. If I had one improvement for them it would be to increase the thumbnail resolution. Something a tad larger. It's hard to make out what a deer is that's 20 yards away. But the picture quality that saves to the card is really pretty nice. I have attached some thumbnails from the system.

 

[TreeDaddy]

Ive got 5 up and running now

Traded the old ones in and got 50% off of the new ones dealing directly with cuddeback

Have always gotten good service from the cameras and good pics

Instructions are intuitive and don't require a lot of study

bill

 

[homegrownbucks]

Bump, I have my eye on these cams and just wanna keep the feedback coming. Performing well?

 

[yoderjac]

This weekend I bought three cuddelink cams and caps via BAss proshops trade in opportunity.

I set them up in my house and they worked great except for the sound they emitted. I contacted Mark Cuddeback and John V about this and they got back to me in a very timely manner.

The cams were making a loud clicking noise when taking a pic in the house. It was loud enough to hear while the tv was on. What they explained to me was that because of the lighting in the house he filter lens was flipping with every photo. It only flips once or twice a day, dawn or dusk.

They were correct that it was the filter lens that drops down over the lens and that when the lens didn't deploy they we quiet, no sound that I could hear.

I am going to put them out this week and start my experiment. If these work as advertised they will be a game changer.

Yep, the worst design is the one that flips a mechanical filter with each picture. You find this on the lowest end cameras. Somewhat better is the version that tries to flip the filter twice a day. The problem with this approach is that deer are diurnal and that low and changing light is where the camera makes mistakes and flips the filter too frequently trying decide if it is day or night. The design I like the best is the dual lens design. This design is absolutely silent since nothing physically moves in the camera. The camera has two lenses and it decides which to use. They make the same mistakes, but the mistakes don't result in noise. You simply get an infrared grey-shade picture when you may have had enough light for a color picture.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Peplin Creek]

I just put my third camera out. So far it's worked exactly as advertised. The only issue I have so far is the filter clicking sound that was reported by others on here. I noticed it as well. So far it hasn't seemed to be an issue with the deer. I wouldn't mind maybe one size larger for thumbnail size as well but the full size images are on the card so not a huge deal breaker. As a stand alone camera, it seems to be well built, the black flash has adequate distance. I have the sensor set to wide instead of centered and I am getting a lot more picture detections than an older model cuddeback that was previous in that spot. Pictures are very clear on the local SD card. you can set the aspect ratio to 4:3 or 16:9. So far battery life seems solid. Honestly no major complaints at this point. The cuddelink system is getting all images home and that's really all I can ask for.

 

[bueller]

Are you guys connecting a camera to a computer with internet connection for remote viewing or just pulling the SD card from one camera to check all of them?

 

[Peplin Creek]

Are you guys connecting a camera to a computer with internet connection for remote viewing or just pulling the SD card from one camera to check all of them?

I am pulling the SD card. I will be in the market for their cell unit when it comes out.

 

[TreeDaddy]

Affordable internet connection will be disruptive technology that renders the current standards( SD cards,etc) obsolete

"Creative destruction" as a famous economist once said

bill

 

[yoderjac]

Affordable internet connection will be disruptive technology that renders the current standards( SD cards,etc) obsolete

"Creative destruction" as a famous economist once said

bill

The affordable wireless internet connection has been there for quite a while for the small amounts of data required for the thumbnails that these cameras send. The problem is with full resolution images. That volume of data requires two resources, power and bandwidth for transmission. The bandwidth is shared and is a finite resource. Newer bandwidth efficient modulations may provide modest gains over time but I don't see anything dramatic on the horizon.

Having said that, SD cards are destined to go the route of records, VHS, CDs, DVD, and the rest...

Thanks,

Jack

 

[chickenlittle]

This would make a nice patent but it's outside my field so I'll just publicly disclose it here. A key point is that most of the data collected by a game camera is useless. Bad photos, no animals, or showing mostly background around the animal. There is no value in wirelessly transmitting that data. The wireless cam could be more power efficient if it could process photos. It could judge photo quality to decide what pics to send. For photos with animals, it could crop background and send higher resolution photos.

 

[yoderjac]

This would make a nice patent but it's outside my field so I'll just publicly disclose it here. A key point is that most of the data collected by a game camera is useless. Bad photos, no animals, or showing mostly background around the animal. There is no value in wirelessly transmitting that data. The wireless cam could be more power efficient if it could process photos. It could judge photo quality to decide what pics to send. For photos with animals, it could crop background and send higher resolution photos.

That is not technically out of reach. Deep Learning with convolutional neural networks require huge horsepower with a host of GPU processors for the learning process, but once the network is developed, it can be executed with less than the power in our cell phones. This would allow for smart picture technology.

However, with my high end cameras, they don't miss much but I get very few false triggers unless the batteries are getting bad. Otherwise, it is rare for me to get a picture that does not have a subject in it. So, when I go through my pictures, I'd estimate I discard about 20% because the subject is not of interest (crows, hawks, groundhogs, etc.) Given the number of pictures I get even if I could reduce it by that 20% before transmission, it is still a lot of data at full resolution.

The success rate of image recognition system has come close to human ability (makes mistakes slightly more frequently than a human). However, as far as I know, most of the work has been done on image databases where the pictures taken by humans. When pictures are taken by trail cameras in varying conditions with fast trigger speeds (no pushing a button for camera to adjust before the pic), I would expect the success rate to be somewhat lower.

At some point, I would hope that these CNNs would be able to relieve me of the burden of manually extracting the data from the picture (2 does, 1 Buck, and 1 turkey or whatever).

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Turtlesprings]

I love this effort that Cuddelink is putting on the market.

First concern. Picture quality. Cuddeback was taken off of a great trail cam testing site at the owners request. As I have read. The picture quality was rather low on the scale. Since my deer want to be more active at night, I need good quality black flash pics with some distance. Do you guys have good nite pics to share?

Second concern. I own a valley with plots on both ends about half mile in distance. Vegetation is hardwoods to lower level sumac and scrub. Does elevation make communications a problem? There is about 500ft of elevation difference from one side down to the bottom and another 500ft back up to the cabin.

Last concern was customer service, but seeing that Mark has contributed to this forum and with other reports that customer service has been restored at Cuddeback, not a real concern.

Thank you

 

[yoderjac]

I love this effort that Cuddelink is putting on the market.

First concern. Picture quality. Cuddeback was taken off of a great trail cam testing site at the owners request. As I have read. The picture quality was rather low on the scale. Since my deer want to be more active at night, I need good quality black flash pics with some distance. Do you guys have good nite pics to share?

Second concern. I own a valley with plots on both ends about half mile in distance. Vegetation is hardwoods to lower level sumac and scrub. Does elevation make communications a problem? There is about 500ft of elevation difference from one side down to the bottom and another 500ft back up to the cabin.

Last concern was customer service, but seeing that Mark has contributed to this forum and with other reports that customer service has been restored at Cuddeback, not a real concern.

Thank you

Elevation in and of itself doesn't make much difference but vegetation does. I think pines are the worst. Think of things in terms of line-of-sight (LOS) and water. Now you can't transmit through the ground, so if you have a hill between the cameras forget it. Of course with the routing, you could put one camera in each valley and one on the top of the hill. Elevation can increase (or decrease) the amount of water (green vegetation) between the cameras. If I'm transmitting on flat ground underneath a hardwood canopy, I can do much better than if I was trying to transmit horizontally at canopy height. So, if your terrain is such that the difference in elevation means transmitting through a canopy rather than underneath or overtop of it you'll have issues.

This in not specific to Cuddeback. All cameras that use the free 900 MHz spectrum will have the same issues with vegetation. If you are OK with thumbnail pictures or willing to pull SD cards for full size images and longevity and reliability are not major concerns and cost is, it might be a fit for you if your terrain/vegetation will allow.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Plottin'booners]

Ive got 5 up and running now

Traded the old ones in and got 50% off of the new ones dealing directly with cuddeback

Have always gotten good service from the cameras and good pics

Instructions are intuitive and don't require a lot of study

bill

I have probably close to a dozen of the older cuddiebacks that either don't work or eat batteries. Are they doing this trade in program yet?

 

[TreeDaddy]

They were a year ago

I would call them ,if interested

They were very helpful when i dealt with them

bill

 

[Bill]

Are you guys connecting a camera to a computer with internet connection for remote viewing or just pulling the SD card from one camera to check all of them?

Can't be done yet Bueller.

Finally decided to pull the trigger on a couple of cuddelinks and use one as the home unit. Called Cudde and what I need doesn't come out until 2018.
Currently you can not hook the home camera to a PC and remotely view images. You need to physically remove the SD card from the camera and put it in the PC's SD slot.
That's hard to from a remote location.

Hopefully they do come out with home unit soon.

 

[bueller]

Can't be done yet Bueller.

Finally decided to pull the trigger on a couple of cuddelinks and use one as the home unit. Called Cudde and what I need doesn't come out until 2018.
Currently you can not hook the home camera to a PC and remotely view images. You need to physically remove the SD card from the camera and put it in the PC's SD slot.
That's hard to from a remote location.

Hopefully they do come out with home unit soon.

I might as well have that type of setup right now as my spypoint cellular is only sending me a deer pic once or twice a week right now . Nothing wrong with the camera, just the placement. The funnel to/from the neighboring bean field has gone dead.